Anybody out there have any experiences with the taoist (or non-taoist) dream practices you want to comment on?
I'd love to hear about it.

Dream practice thrives on sperm retention and zinc/B vitamins. I've also had good luck with using some sort of foot vibrator or meditation type practice right before going to bed. I actually own a lucid dreamer machine that flashes lights into your eyes when you are in REM sleep. Never totally got the hang of it, though, I always wondered what was up with the flashing lights all the time. Didn't often make the connection. Casteneda, Winn, and Master Ron all say that dream practice depends on the power of strong intention before going to bed. Just keeping a written dream journal is a good start at becoming more mindful of dreams and more conscious in dealing with them.

I'm not doing formal dream practices right now, but that is on the to-do list once I get some sort of long-term retention policy stably in place. I am enjoying extremely nice dreams these days, though.

When you consistently dream something on a regular basis that means you are 70-80% complete on manifesting that quality, experience, etc.

It's beneficial to go to bed in a great mood even if you don't care about dream practice.

Sweet dreams!

-Yoda

I love dreamwork. I just do an exercise moving my dreaming body before bed, then I keep track of my dreams and then analyze them. I think it's vit.B6 that helps remember them, but I may be wrong. I keep a notepad and pen by the side of my bed.

I also really like this tape: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156455221...283155&v=glance and she has others I want to check out.

A friend of mine swares by Robert Moss, his page is http://www.mossdreams.com and she likes his book Conscious Dreaming a lot.

B vitamins huh? Maybe I'll try that, can the b vitamins help induce lucid dreaming as well as boost dream recall?

Also, I'm interested in that mysterious gap bettween sleep and awakeness, any thoughts on how to navigate that terrain?

B6 is supposed to produce vivid dreams according to durk pearson. In my experience it hasn't helped much with lucid dreaming. I've had success using melatonin to induce a lucid dreams from the beginning of the night, but most come after a full night sleep. I believe in castaneda's theory that dreaming ability is based on your sexual energy. When I was in college I had lucid dreams alot but I was able to always sleep late. Now I'm sleep deprived, I never get to sleep in so I rarely have them. Lucid dreaming is simply amazing. I never looked at the Winn dream practice stuff. I would like to talk about this stuff as I don't know anyone who is into it.
Thaddeus

I've had people telling me that this CD is great for dream practice: Learning Strategies: Dream Play.

One guy used his dream time to practice martial-arts moves (with the help of the cd above) and said his technique and learning skyrocketed.

In fact learning and its connections with sleep have been researched - and it was found that if you sleep after learning a complex task you will remember it much better. So if there were two actors learning lines - one learnt his lines in the morning before he was on stage and one learnt them the night before - the one who had time to sleep would remember his lines much better.

I also agree that using a strong intention before sleep is important - I've done this many times - I get into bed and start to fall asleep - when i feel like i'm just about to fall asleep I say to myself that i will have a deep rejuvinating sleep and will wake up at 7:45am. Whenever i've done that; without fail, I've always woken up at that exact time - very strange! Also I bet a lot of you wake up just a minute before your alarm rings - it's a similar thing.

Do regular meditation for long while say a couple of months. Do it before going to bed just like yoda said. After a while you will recognize the same consciousness that you find in meditation while on the verge of sleep.. You can easier go into this consciousness if you lower your awareness-center and move into your chest/stomach instead of your head.

Imagine that you are shrinking and sitting inside your head then lower yourself into your chest/stomach and sit there cosy and safe in inside yourself protected by your "house" that your body is.

Soon enough you will feel strong energetic currents pulsating throughout your whole body and if you stay in this you will be in a blissful excstasy throughout the whole night. You will not feel as tired as if you hadn't got any sleep the whole night and one night once in a while will rather make you more alert. But more than 2-3 nights of this will make you seriously sleep deprived.

Usually the problem for me is not how to get into this consciousness but how to break the meditative awareness and simply "go to sleep" like a normal person..

This usually happens by itself one two nights a month.. Might be connected to the moonphases, usually it's not on fullmoon though.

Any other inputs, dear taobums?

Hmmm, well couple of years back at uni, used to kind of scan through my textbook. Then I'd go to sleep. Then my mind would just seem to be sorting and making energetic connections and stuff. Certainly seemed to have helped in developing a more flexible mindset and learning towards the subject.

Here is a very well done online FREE course on Lucid Dreaming and its got a lot on the working on the twilight zone between sleeping and wakefulness.
www.geocities.com/lucidmetro/coursetable.htm#TABLE%20OF

Its called A Course on Consiousness. Its worth studying and printing out. I always end up w/ bad insomnia when I work too much on Lucid Dream work.

That said I just found the 'Sleeping Chi Kung' CD from the chi Nei Tsang Institute. I ordered it, and I don't know if I ever listened to it. It has an interesting 9 Turns and Sleeping Loop directed practice that guarantees sleep. Something about twirling your tonque around your mouth and 'feeling' the same circling at your tan tien. I'll try it tonight

Michael

Cool link. Thanks. He relates the dream state is connected to a larger cosmological picture which is interesting.

There's a free online Astral Travel and Dreams Course at Gnosticweb that I signed up for and was thinking about going through... doesn't start until January, but register and they'll send you an email when things get started.

Sean.

You can close the eyes and observe the mental images without giving them interest, attachment. This takes a bit of time and works better the morning but it's better than nothing.

Concerning Castaneda, some of you cite the fact of having "intention" but it's not the intention in the habitual sense, it would be more that one of trusting that the lucid dream will happen. We don't have to fight to lucid dream... If you want to cern your "intention", you can concentrate on it: it locates some centimeters above the navel.

What we can do is practice meditation and when we are enough in a meditative state we repeat some affirmations. It will work because there's a certain will that's negative, it's a need to force things and meditation destructs it.

I'm going to buy some books about taoist dreaming, I'll post when I'll find something but you can read this:
http://www.healingtao.org/deutsch/artikel2.htm

Another link, it's apparently the same text but I'm don't completely sure:
http://www.angelfire.com/ga2/stepstoinsani...LEEPING%20TIGER

You can also find books about tibetan dream yoga (for exemple, with eMule/eDonkey... ).
A book from Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, the Tenzil Wangyan Rinpoche one's and Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (Evans-Wentz).

About the books on taoist dreaming, there's Taoist yoga of dreaming (Oleg Tcherne), Taoism: Essential teachings of the way and its power (Ken Cohen) and there's a CD from Michael Winn: Taoist dream practice.


Would you know if Michael Winn also made a book about this subject?
Anyone would know the names of other books about dream yoga, taoist dreaming or something like that?

I used to lucid dream a lot. From my experience the best way to induce lucid dreaming is by doing a lot meditation, as well as intention before falling asleep ofcource. During my lucind dreaming period I did 4 hours of meditation every day.

I could fly whenever I wanted, have sex with anyone I wanted, go on vacations, heal myself and other people, sit down and go into deep meditation, meet masters and spend time in satsangs, etc. This is what is called lucid dreaming - conscious control of your dreams. There is no limitations(other than what you are already limitated by).

After a while I got bored by controlling my dreams like that so I started just observing while in the lucid state. Now days when I get lucid Im not controlling my dreams. I let them play out just the way they are. Only a few times will I intervene in the natural flow of my dreams. I think this is a lot more productive for my own developement. This is called pellucid dreaming.

It is great fun to learn lucid dreaming, but in the end it is limiting just the way our waking consciousness is limiting.

I use a dreamwork method called Dream Yoga, www.dreamyoga.com, (not tibetian dream yoga) which gives you a feel for what the dream really is ment to tell you and assist you in. It is a method that helps you see the dream from the perspective of the dream. While symbolic interpretation is seeing the dream from your waking perspective, Dream Yoga is seeing yourself from the dreams perspective.

It is not easy to understand, but if you give it a try Im shure you will be just as amazed as I was when first trying this method. Go to "sample session" at www.dreamyoga.com and try for yourselves.

Do you have anything more pragmatical please?
And what is the goal of answering these questions?...
It's not an analysis of my dreams that will give me some lucid dreams.

One of the main tricks to dreaming is to be very aware of your daily activities and cut out on the day dreaming. Try to walk around and pay full attention to everything, and also when you go to sleep at night, lay on your back and feel your heartbeat, and let your body fall asleep while retaining conciousness by paying attention to your heart beat, and you can just start dreaming with full control of your astral body .

Ben

Well, actually by doing dreamwork, any kind of dreamwork, your mind becomes more aware of your dreams and learn to make it a natural part of itself. That makes it easier to attain lucid dreaming.

Any method that puts your focus on dreams makes it easier to go lucid in dreams. The reason I mentioned Dream Yoga is because it is not a method of interpretation, its a method of communication with the aspects of your self that presents themselves in the dream. You're not dealing with the dream through your daily waking consciousnes, but the consciousness that you are in the dream. By doing this you actually make it easier for yourself to learn lucid dreaming. It is much more effective than regular symbolic interpretation.

You can read any book you want, learn a thousand different techniques, and all will get you closer to lucid dreaming. But in the end it is practice and steady focus that really makes you able to do it.

In the sense of true astral projection we are dealing with forces that are more then just aspects of our selves.We are contending with energetic life forms that may or may not be of benifit.A close consideration of our behaviour during waking hours can help ellicit the same attention in sleep.I learned the hard way (no teacher)that during projection it is best to keep a low profile,chose your geographic i.e. where you lie down physically very carefully and well prepared flight plan in case of emergency.I found the best aides for lucid dreaming are living in wild isolated places away from the distractions of the world,being mindful during waking hours and hard physical exercise i.e hiking, swimming,in wilderness areas.Also not speaking alot, remaining quite for long periods of time seems to help reserve the neccessary energy required to wake up in sleep.During the day I repeat to myself "Wake Up",this instruction alone is generally sufficient enough during sleep to help bring about the lucid state of mind.

Taoist dream practice is very similar to Tibetan dream yoga.

Here is a good book on Tibetan dream yoga :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tibetan-Yogas-Drea...3905&sr=8-1

One of the main points in the practice is to induce lucid dreaming, whereby the person dreaming realises they are dreaming, and can then utilise that time for whatever purposes they wish.

For example, we can spend a good proportion of our 8 hours of sleep per day in meditation, whilst we are asleep, because we are concious in our dreams. Its also good fun, as any lucid dreamer will tell you, you can build your own world in your dreams and live in it. Though indulging in these fantasies goes against the point of the religious aspect of freeing the mind of fantasy.

I once talked to a priest who was trained by other priests in his dreams as part of his daily training. He said that each moment can feel like a year has passed. In one night he was able to re-live two weeks of his past in full.

The basic techniques are very easy, I have personally acheived lucid dreams on 3 or 4 nights of the first week of practice. These are however only moments (5 mins) of lucidness and more practice is required to have full lucid dreams.

One of the first and most useful parts of the practice is to keep a dream journal, whereby you write down your dream(s) each night the second you wake up in the morning. Using this technique alone gives astonishing results that you might not expect. Other techniques, to name just a few, include extending the period of lucidity, falling asleep in a lucid state and how to induce lucidity whilst you are dreaming by watching for dream signs.

There are other books available by modern psychologists which give the same results. These are mainly to acheive lucidity, it is then up to the practitioner to decide what to do with that dream.

Ben Koontz>

OK, thanks but it is not as "easy" that it was some years ago...
Most time I try meditation, I fall asleep or I begin thinking many things. When the mental begins to be calm, I also fall asleep... Before I relaxed then meditated but now I cannot just relax...
In general, I don't remember my dreams and have continously the mind full of thoughts particularly during the day but also in night (but I also have some problems with the astral plane, it's too complex to explain).


sheng zhen>
After the questions, it doesn't seem. What are you doing when you answered them?


You're right but the problem is that's no "definite" technique, it's more taking habits of living in most part.


Thank you, seadog.


Jakara>

Maybe but I'd prefer practice taoist dream yoga. Tibetan one is much "hermetical" and I feel myself more attracted towards tao's dream yoga (and perhaps other ways's ones) and in fact, I find dream yogas much more interesting that "only" lucid dreaming techniques or books (particularly from psychologists... (even if I find the psychology, I don't think it's a real "tool" to abord situations and problems).


After Florence Ghibellini (http:/florence.ghibellini.free.fr for those who understand french... ), one of the people who makes most lucid dreams in Europe (or in the world (after studies in laboratories) if not the "lucidiest" dreamer, it's impossible to maintain meditation in dreams. When we try stopping actions, scenarii and movement in dreams, do some meditation, there's always an obstacle to try stopping us to do it or the dream itself disappears...
There are reports of her lucid dreams and experiences at this subject on the same website (http://florence.ghibellini.free.fr/revelucidej/floindex.html).


Yes but for most people they can't do anything in their lucid dreams (or not at the beginning, at least) and if they are too lucid they can't change it because it's not "real" from the point of view of the day mind (the "lucid" part).


Yes and apparently we can "live" much more than only two weeks but many years. Someone would do a dream where 100 years passed...
Did you encounter in a dream or in the diurn life?



Not in my case... I already tried it.

Oh, you mean the questions in Dream Yoga? After all is answered you have a lot of informations and ways to help yourself. It all comes from the way the questions are designed. If you try it you will see for yourself.

To give you an example: I dreamed I was at a research station on a military boat on the ocean researching DNA manipoulation on sharks. One shark turned bad and didnt stop growing and got more and more aggressive.

At the time I thought this dream was a warning that I did too much qigong, that the energy I got from it was too much for me to handle.

But during the Dream Yoga interview I did with the shark he said that he was actually there to help me deal with the energy. He told me not to cut down on qigong, but to imagine myself being the shark while doing it. That helped my body and mind to ground the energy and being able to deal with it without spacing out. Because I interviewed the shark I realized it was not really aggressive. The image of aggression was something my mind created because I have a subconscious fear of being so full of energy and lifeforce that the qigong gives me. The shark itself was there only to help me integrate the energy I get from qigong.

Normally we spend a week with the character we interview to integrate that aspect and what it brings to our daily life.

Did you re-enter in your dream after awaking or did you "interview" in another dream (another night (thinking to it or another technique (?)?

Try the sample session at www.dreamyoga.com, its all explained there.

Ive done it many times when Im lucid, but normally you just re-enter the dream. Try the sample session and you'll get it

sheng zhen>

I already read it. I don't find it provides helps because I know what I'd do if I was one character of a dream... Anyone I don't know how would we can?...
Perhaps it works when we have enough intuition (but I nearly don't have anymore consciously).

Anyway, if I can't get asleep consciously I'll can change this dream or even interview the people of my dream?
When I could practice relaxation and meditation, I could to do the practice I have mentioned but I now I can't...

I don't see about what this "sample session" helps you...

Dosent matter if you have intuition or not. Just have fun. Be like a 5 year old boy, playful, and answer the questions spontaneously. And it dosent matter if you dont feel you are the character. Just do it anyway. Dont use your mind until after the interview when you read through it again. Be spontaneous and answer the questions quickly.

If you do that and answer all the questions, Im shure you will be very surprised at what you have discovered

sheng zhen>
I can't be spontaneous neither to be "like a 5 years old boy"...
More, if we don't remember the dream clearly, there will be at least some questions which we'll cannot answer.

oh well, dont worry. Keep working on your lucid dreaming, its more than enough

But just to answer your last statement before we give this thread over to taoist dream practice again...there are no questions you cant answer in dream yoga because it is not "you" who answer them, it is the dream character. The dream character has another experience and another viewpoint than you do concerning the dream. It is not easy to understand this without firsthand experience of the dreamyoga prosess. But with experience these realizations come marching in! PM me if you still have questions regarding dream yoga. Ill be happy to answer them.

sheng zhen>

OK, thank you very much.
I nearly had none lucid dream but when I'll can practice well meditation again, maybe it will be better. Occasionaly, I do false akawenings. Once I had 3 or 4 falses ones in succession.

I remember a (nonlucid) dream where I met one of my totem animal (or guide(?), there was a kind of husky-like wolfhound. We were in iced lake, I believe. I (or maybe he) approached. I believed that I talked him and he told me that I could put my arm round him which I done.

Some days or weeks later, waiting a train, I saw a dog nearly exactly like the other one but unhappily I didn't ask to its "owner"...

The dog of my dream (I didn't find particular differences with the other one (maybe the darkness of the colours,...) had blue eyes and had brown and white hair, I believe. I believe that there was another colour but I don't remember.
Would you (or anyone) do what it is or could be as crossbreading?


One other time, I did a lucid dream where I communicate with a kind of morphing animal which told me many coherent things but I didn't remember them after the dream unhappily. I believe that it was in this dream that I rode a cow.

I started a dream thread but havent opened it up (unhid it) yet Since writing them down I have been dreaming more and just about every night. It doesnt seem like I ever have time to inquire about who the characters are in my dreams....stuff is always happening, I have some obstacle to overcome, problem to fix...

What do you want to say by "dream thread"?

You remember more dreams or do more lucid dreams?

Sorry...personal practice section. I didnt want to have it be a main forum topic! I've never done any sort of lucid dreaming...just lots of normal ones.